Juno News - The Radical Politics Hijacking Canadian Education

00:00:00.000 what's going on with education what was once a system built to pass on knowledge and critical

00:00:05.600 thinking has been hijacked by ideological crusaders who see the classroom not as a

00:00:11.360 place of learning but as a vehicle for social transformation the bureaucratic class calls it

00:00:18.080 equity and more recently they call it human rights but what we're seeing is the enforcement

00:00:24.320 of a world view one where everything is filtered through race gender and power the role of the

00:00:31.040 teacher is now to guide students toward social justice rather than objective truth and it seems

00:00:38.480 questioning any of this makes you the problem what's worse is how seamlessly this has been built

00:00:44.880 into the system from teacher colleges to ministry directives from textbooks to training sessions the

00:00:51.840 political framework is already in place many parents are only just waking up to it and frankly

00:00:58.560 they're horrified to learn that their children are being taught to view canada as a country built on

00:01:03.120 oppression not through reason debate of course but as unquestionable moral truth this is disrupted i'm

00:01:10.400 melanie bennett this is my first show so i just want to take a minute to say what a privilege it is

00:01:24.640 to be joining true north to bring you this show true north really stand apart in canada no government

00:01:30.480 funding just independent journalism and if you're watching this show you probably know how rare that

00:01:35.600 is these days so it's worth supporting if you haven't already please consider subscribing to juno

00:01:40.880 news where you'll find excellent reporting from true north wire and from the juno team some of you

00:01:46.400 might know me from my other channel the canadian culture wars report where i expose the excesses of

00:01:51.920 woke education and gender ideology with shannon boucher that work continues here but with an upgrade

00:01:57.680 here on disrupted i'll be digging into those topics and others shaping our institutions we'll hear from

00:02:02.640 canadians pushing back against the authoritarian drift and we'll dissect the narratives driving

00:02:07.120 culture and politics my first guest is stephen reach he's a phd student at the ontario institute

00:02:13.520 for studies and education at the university of toronto where he focuses on educational leadership

00:02:19.760 and policy before entering academia stephen worked as a research lawyer and holds a bachelor of laws

00:02:26.560 and a master of arts his current work explores the growing tension between critical theory

00:02:31.840 and cognitive science shaping k-12 education stephen has been one of the few voices willing to say

00:02:37.840 plainly what many suspect that importing american identity politics into canadian classrooms

00:02:44.800 has done nothing to help students learn and everything to entrench ideology stephen's work

00:02:49.760 argues that these frameworks are not only unsupported by evidence they're actively undermining

00:02:54.880 education in his recent paper how ideology not science determined teaching children to read in ontario

00:03:01.760 published in the journal of controversial ideas he lays out a case for why sound evidence-based

00:03:07.840 instruction not activist dogma is the only way to close achievement gaps and actually serve children

00:03:14.480 stephen is also a co-chair for heterodox academy an organization that champions open inquiry and genuine

00:03:21.440 intellectual diversity in higher education he's also my friend welcome stephen i'm tickled you're here

00:03:28.400 thanks for having me uh i want to talk about something that you're very passionate about

00:03:35.280 you've studied critical theory in education but perhaps many viewers won't really understand the term

00:03:42.000 and they may not be so familiar with it i was hoping that you could walk us through what that means

00:03:46.480 and how that ends up shaping what students are taught in school sure so critical theory has a really long

00:03:54.800 history going back to the 1920s it's uh neo-marxist investigation of power relationships and society

00:04:02.800 and so you might ask well what does this have to do with education well once it uh moved across the

00:04:08.400 atlantic from you know its home in germany uh into the united states then it became um something that fed

00:04:15.360 uh some of the scholarship in terms of uh black liberation uh feminism queer studies um and this

00:04:24.960 was really taken up by uh schools of education in terms of the research and in terms of their teaching

00:04:31.120 uh future teachers and what it really is is it's sort of the abandonment of looking at you know what

00:04:37.920 is civilizational knowledge that we expect that all adults should have at 18 after they've gone through

00:04:43.440 a public school system and what skills will they need based on that knowledge in order to function

00:04:49.440 as functioning adults in society and instead it's really directed toward transformational change of

00:04:57.600 society now where the question is is well what is that transformational change and that's a question

00:05:04.720 that it never answers um and in order to get there it really looks to saying well we have to have this

00:05:12.160 sort of binary division in society between the the oppressors and the oppressed and we're going to

00:05:19.200 say that certain groups in society are the oppressors and certain groups are the oppressed

00:05:25.280 and we're going to really make education about focusing on how bad the oppressors were um how you know

00:05:32.960 how much the oppressed were were victimized and how we have to raise the voices of the oppressed

00:05:40.720 and somehow their whole knowledge about their oppression not their knowledge about anything

00:05:46.080 else but their knowledge of the oppression is going to guide what education is and that's where

00:05:51.520 we find ourselves today in ontario so interestingly this week there was an announcement from the ontario

00:06:00.640 minister of education uh talking about some changes in education but before we get to that i want to show you

00:06:06.640 a little clip but before we get to get to get to that in your research you have specifically talked

00:06:11.200 about american style politics i think you've even used that term yep um and there's some disagreement

00:06:17.520 apparently about what exactly that constitutes so i thought what we could do is we could watch a little

00:06:23.280 clip from uh minister paul calandra's announcement this week yeah look look we'll see that'll be uh judged

00:06:30.800 through uh through regulations but there are examples uh across the the province of ontario and again i hate to keep

00:06:35.920 coming back to the the uh the toronto district school board but i said i want politics out of

00:06:40.320 the schools uh first and foremost right i want trustees i don't need trustees to develop curriculum

00:06:45.920 i don't need them to give me advice on global affairs what i need them to do is put money into

00:06:50.400 classrooms and into to uh to our teachers so our students can succeed when they move away from that

00:06:56.960 mission uh i will i will have the authority under this legislation to put them back on track

00:07:02.240 uh and ensure that they're focused on their main mission uh student achievement full stop and i

00:07:08.720 will not hesitate to step in where i need to step in i am frankly as done as all parents are and teachers

00:07:14.560 are with a school system that has turned into a political battle zone teach our kids give the parents

00:07:21.440 the teachers the resources they they need or we will step in and do the job for them so that was the

00:07:26.000 clip but in response to that the elementary teachers federation of ontario put out a tweet statement

00:07:34.800 and they said in that tweet the doug ford government's latest actions are not isolated they're part of

00:07:41.680 a broader deliberate effort to americanize ontario's public education system from school board takeovers

00:07:48.480 and merit-based post-secondary policies to disrupt disrupting equity initiatives like school renaming

00:07:55.040 this government is borrowing directly from a trump style politic that centralizes power dismantles

00:08:01.280 public education and stokes division by supporting populist conservative narratives that turn communities

00:08:07.360 against one another so i'd be curious because you've talked about american style politics and you

00:08:12.320 frame it in a different way and so who's right well uh you know there's a there's a lot to be said

00:08:20.880 about both statements uh why don't we start with paul calandra's statement um i think that paul

00:08:27.120 calandra is unacquainted with what his ministry is doing um and i would love to have a meeting with

00:08:33.760 paul calandra and i can show him my research from my ma thesis where i clocked uh the ideological bent of

00:08:42.800 all the ministry of education uh productions in terms of curriculum and teacher resource and policy

00:08:49.040 documents from 1980 onward and even under uh doug ford the amount of critical theory concepts equity

00:08:58.880 uh diversity inclusion and you know although those sound wonderful um they're really tied to a sort of

00:09:06.960 that same neo-marxist uh analysis of society into oppressors and the oppressed making education about

00:09:14.160 that the the ministry is the one that needs to look yeah right inside their building um the entire curricula

00:09:25.200 that is uh you know drafted by bams for a k-12 education needs a revision that curricula is exactly a

00:09:34.480 lifting of the american conceptions of you know intractable social problems the united states between the white

00:09:42.400 population and the black population as they you know divide it and as they see it based on their

00:09:48.160 history um perhaps rightly so that we've imported straight into canada we've imported that american

00:09:54.640 narrative straight into canada without any consideration other than perhaps adding you know

00:09:59.680 indigenous into the you know the block of the oppressed um so he needs to take a look forget about 1.00

00:10:06.480 the school boards i mean the school boards are a creature of statute that's you know at at the stroke

00:10:13.600 of a pen the government can uh and because they're a majority government they could get rid of school 0.99

00:10:18.960 boards altogether um what the school boards do and what's delegated to them uh ultimately is the

00:10:26.640 responsibility of his ministry so this is less about the the school boards and more about what's going

00:10:32.880 on at the top i mean all he has to do is open up any curriculum and spend you know a little bit of

00:10:38.240 time reading the first 70 pages and it will become very clear to him that the curriculum is establishing

00:10:44.960 that kind of american politics and that kind of grievance politics and is ignoring uh content subject 0.84

00:10:54.080 matter is ignoring what the science says about the best way to teach that subject matter to students

00:10:59.680 um it doesn't inculcate a national identity um it sows division and that's right in the ministry's own

00:11:07.760 documents so um you know if anyone out there has the opportunity to introduce me to paul calandra i would

00:11:14.320 love to meet with him and uh show him what his ministry is doing before he points the finger at the tdsb

00:11:21.520 and not to say that what he's saying to the tdsb isn't correct i agree with him but you know the

00:11:27.920 messaging is coming from his ministry it's coming from up above so you're i want to talk a little

00:11:33.920 bit about your research you have quantitatively and uh well you did a quantitative analysis comparing

00:11:42.240 the frequency of words that are uh ideological well critical theory words we'll call them ideal

00:11:48.560 ideological words within curriculum compared to uh evidence-based science of learning words within

00:11:56.480 the curriculum there's supposed to be more science of learning and less ideological uh material

00:12:02.480 within the ministry's curriculum do you want to tell us a little bit about what you found sure

00:12:06.880 um so basically i looked at close to 800 uh policy documents coming under the ministry of

00:12:12.000 education from about 1982 to uh 2022 so it was over a 40-year period and what you see is that exactly at

00:12:23.040 the time that these identity politics were arising in the states and making their way through ed schools

00:12:29.760 and making their way into uh policy uh recommendations in the united states they were being lifted and and

00:12:37.520 you know there are uh scholars who believe in this who even say that um that uh this stuff was just

00:12:46.160 lifted uh from um you know the american experience transferred into canada so if the united states is

00:12:53.360 doing equity diversity inclusion if they're doing you know that school needs to be about social justice

00:12:58.960 and revolution um then we just lifted it into our curriculum so you see a real spike in the 90s uh

00:13:05.360 following uh the riots in la um and then we had the copycat riots uh in toronto in 1993 i believe uh so

00:13:16.800 it starts there and then it sort of declines declines from the harris years and then once kathleen

00:13:22.080 winn uh is in power again we see the rise and it just keeps building all the way through and building even

00:13:29.520 more under the conservative government so it didn't matter that there was an ideological change in

00:13:35.120 government um the the making school about these american style politics uh continued onward and we

00:13:45.680 even see that you know in the new uh elementary school language curriculum which includes you know

00:13:52.400 teaching kids how to read and write um that while yes they took the advice of the ontario human rights

00:13:58.480 commission and you know about the science of reading and putting some stuff in there although

00:14:04.080 really it went into an appendix um the rest of the curriculum doubled down on those ideological

00:14:11.360 politics um that there's even more critical theory language in the new curriculum than there was

00:14:17.520 in the old curriculum so i really do let me just clarify if you just mentioned the right to read

00:14:24.560 report the ontario human rights commission put out a report called the right to read report

00:14:28.560 and it's worth digging into that just a little bit so in there i remember reading that the

00:14:34.800 recommendation was to use less they didn't call it social justice what did they call it socio-cultural

00:14:42.800 focus or socio-cultural concerns to focus less on that but they specifically mentioned uh culturally

00:14:51.120 relevant and responsive pedagogy which is what the education is based on now this socio-cultural

00:14:56.160 pedagogy but they specifically said that this was leading uh children to achieve uh to have lower

00:15:02.720 lower outcomes lower achievement and to stop using it and you track the curriculums after those

00:15:07.600 recommendations and you and what did you find well and i found that that uh it more than doubled in

00:15:14.000 terms of the critical theory language um or the culturally relevant pedagogy language and just to be

00:15:21.440 clear um those two systems like uh you know using cognitive science the science of learning and what

00:15:29.200 culturally relevant pedagogy demands they can't be accomplished at the same time they're completely

00:15:34.240 different um because the science of learning and this is common sense so anyone listening to this is

00:15:39.760 going to say oh yeah that makes sense to me but it's also evidence-based we hear about evidence evidence

00:15:45.920 based is the science of learning and then non they call it not evidence-based but the uh the culturally

00:15:52.720 relevant response to pedagogy isn't actually evidence-based well they'll say oh it is evidence-based

00:15:58.400 because it's based on these studies where we've spoken to five teachers and and you know sort of

00:16:04.080 solicited their feelings about white supremacy for example and they'll call that evidence but i'm

00:16:09.680 talking about real quantitative evidence and you can generalize like done in an experimental or quasi

00:16:14.720 experimental uh situation where you have controls where you actually you know you do there's a pre

00:16:20.320 test there's a post test you can see whether or not your technique is working so the problem is is

00:16:25.520 that you know the science of learning really requires an expert who is the focus of the classroom who

00:16:31.200 is running the classroom who has a specific method of teaching you know we start with phonics we start

00:16:38.800 with sound correspondences we do spelling at the same time you know it gets more and more complicated

00:16:45.040 then once you go through a stage of that then you're using interesting books not just any text but

00:16:52.160 interesting books to then build vocabulary and understanding again using those principles where

00:16:58.560 it's not every kid doing their own thing and discovering how to read but rather the teacher

00:17:03.920 instructing directly how to do it and keeping track and giving immediate feedback and then of course

00:17:10.160 always having lots of practice spacing that practice out because what you want to do is you want to

00:17:15.680 make sure that that sticks into your long-term memory so that you can read automatically you don't have to

00:17:22.000 expend any working memory energy uh for reading part of the reason why kids don't like to read and even

00:17:28.800 you know young adults don't like to read is it's too effortful and it's too effortful because they haven't

00:17:34.480 you know gotten it into uh their long-term memory to the point where um they can have automatic recall

00:17:42.160 now culturally relevant pedagogy is the exact opposite no hierarchy in the classroom ideally uh everyone is a

00:17:50.000 cold child centered child centered everyone an assumption which is a myth that everyone has a

00:17:56.240 learning style that's been proven false there are no such things as learning styles we learn through all

00:18:02.720 of our senses we use all of our senses while learning um so you might think that you you know are a visual

00:18:09.760 learner or an auditory learner but the fact is you're using all of that and and your brain has different

00:18:15.120 channels for inputting that information into your working memory where it you then uh build a schemata

00:18:24.080 of what you're learning in your long-term memory and that's what you need to be doing so culturally

00:18:30.400 relevant pedagogy doesn't do any of that it's not concerned with memory in fact you know you'll hear

00:18:35.520 these people saying oh memorization is drill and kill and well you do have to memorize you have to memorize

00:18:41.600 your multiplication tables you have to memorize your math facts you have to memorize the sound

00:18:46.960 correspondences with words if you want to have any knowledge of history to then be critical about

00:18:52.160 you're going to have to memorize that too we use our memories all the time so to ignore memory and say

00:18:58.880 you know the six-year-old has enough lived experience whatever that means i guess you know whatever

00:19:04.560 experience they've had in their life that they can now critically examine the complicated world is

00:19:10.960 ridiculous i mean you know anyone that through their own cultural lens no doubt well and that also

00:19:16.640 makes an assumption right that's saying that based on your skin color you are xyz which is not true

00:19:22.880 because there's so many other factors right there's you know the biggest one is socioeconomic level

00:19:28.880 and that's really where sort of this equity-based education system really fails because it assumes a

00:19:35.840 middle-class orientation that parents are going to help their kids do their homework that if the kids have

00:19:40.800 projects you know if the parents can't help they'll hire tutors well that doesn't take into account the

00:19:46.080 kids whose parents don't have those resources are working three jobs and can't sit and do homework with

00:19:50.720 their kids so when you're asking you know children who know pretty much nothing to discover their own

00:19:57.440 knowledge that's a big ask and because of that we see the results we see the results in pisa scores that

00:20:06.320 where they're declining and reading and math and science and all the other countries who have

00:20:12.400 adopted that american model are finding the same thing so you know you'll sort of see well canada

00:20:17.760 still you know we're we're with the rest of the developed world in terms of our pisa scores but if

00:20:22.160 you actually look at the rest of the developed world they're all heading in a downward direction

00:20:29.040 yeah i'm i i think you hit the nail on the head in terms of why i take such an interest in education

00:20:34.960 obviously i did have a child that went through education but it's mostly because k-12 education

00:20:40.000 is the foundation for everybody's future so it affects everyone whether or not you have children

00:20:43.760 in school and what we're doing here is we are imposing pedagogies that are not actually helping

00:20:50.000 the future thrive so it is a concern for everyone because if people are not functional in the future

00:20:56.560 perhaps you won't have a pension to rely on there's so there's all these interconnecting

00:21:01.040 factors with education but i don't want to end up blackpilling everyone because it can be like that

00:21:06.160 in education to be sure but i was wondering if you perhaps had any suggestions of what either parents

00:21:13.520 or other other people could do to to try to raise the alarm or do something about especially at this

00:21:18.160 time when it appears that ontario's minister of education perhaps has an ear towards listening

00:21:22.880 well i think parent groups and individual parents should write to the minister and say

00:21:31.360 that the ministry has to the reform that the ministry has to do is to reorient education around

00:21:40.000 knowledge and and the pedagogy that we know works because it's been experimentally tested and we've

00:21:50.480 known about this for 50 or more years that science is only getting more exact i mean but the outlines

00:21:57.920 of it we've known for a long time yeah it in fact is common sense i think those parents can can write to

00:22:04.320 them and parents can have conversations with teachers now some teachers have swallowed the kool-aid

00:22:10.080 and you know you're never going to move them but i find and you know i when i uh speak at events i find

00:22:17.440 that you know the upper echelons of the ed schools uh the professors um in faculties of education are

00:22:24.720 very hostile toward my ideas but the students themselves in the ed schools the teachers themselves

00:22:32.080 the students themselves and the parents are very receptive because it's quite simple like we just

00:22:38.720 have to have a knowledge-based uh curriculum and we have to teach teachers how to teach that curriculum

00:22:45.040 in the most efficient and fairway and so write to your ministers speak to your teachers speak to

00:22:50.640 other parents put together groups where you write to the minister if you like what i'm saying

00:22:58.000 i'd be happy to come and speak to your group i'd be happy to you know put myself out as someone who

00:23:04.480 could speak to the minister there are other people that i know who are also very concerned about the

00:23:11.520 direction of education we can help um so i think that that's that's what people can do i'm eternally

00:23:20.160 an optimist that i think that at some point you know there is sort of a reaction um we're seeing a

00:23:25.680 little bit of a reaction in the states now unfortunately when the pendulum swings too far

00:23:29.760 one way then it swings too far the other way and i think that what we see in the united states with trump

00:23:35.040 and some of the more uh authoritarian uh things that are going on there in terms of government is the

00:23:42.960 reaction to what was going on before um i think that if we try and seek agreement about what are the

00:23:50.240 goals of society and i think everyone pretty much agrees that we would like a knowledgeable society

00:23:55.520 where people care about their country and one another i think the majority of people care about

00:24:00.960 that that that um and they care that you know whether you come from a poor home a middle class

00:24:06.720 home a rich home that you deserve a quality education um and the chance to prove your talents

00:24:13.280 it's not going to result in equal outcomes because some people are smarter some people are more talented

00:24:18.880 etc etc but um at least it will make everyone uh have mastery over a body of knowledge that is going

00:24:27.920 to serve them well not only for themselves as adults but also for this country and you know we got a

00:24:33.200 big shock with trump's uh 51st state thing like suddenly after you know years of you know not liking

00:24:41.280 canada and not being proud of canada suddenly everyone became patriotic well we have to make something

00:24:46.640 of that what time what actually ties us together what is the history that ties us together with its

00:24:52.000 warts and all but you know a history that we can be proud of for the most part and say that we

00:24:58.720 continue to improve um we have to care about our fellow citizens we have to unleash innovation if we

00:25:04.960 want canada you know not reliant and just sort of a branch plant of the united states um we want to

00:25:11.040 create our own jobs our own industries here then people have to care about this country and if all we

00:25:16.640 do is put down every system and everyone who existed in this system at every time and use presentism the

00:25:23.760 idea that we're going to morally judge people uh in the past by present standards well that's not

00:25:29.680 critical thinking that's easy critical thinking is when you can place yourself back in that era of

00:25:34.720 history and judge them by you know what did people know back then that's much more critical and much more

00:25:42.480 interesting than judging them by today's standards which we might find 10 years from now that we're

00:25:48.320 judging today's standards yeah so we're coming to the end of the time that we have today but you

00:25:55.360 mentioned if people wanted to get a hold of you because you uh you you quite happily go meet with people

00:26:00.720 and do talks and all sorts of things like that so how would they get in touch with you uh if they so chose

00:26:07.040 um well i suppose that they could do it through you your listeners could do it through you i'll i will give

00:26:11.920 you my email address um and feel free if you're able to you know put it on the screen for your viewers

00:26:19.040 um it's s f reich r e i ch at outlook.com so again that's s f reich at outlook.com um and i will

00:26:31.040 certainly answer you and uh as i said you know i think the the clue for i would sit down at a table with

00:26:36.960 anyone even someone who is diametrically opposed to the ideas that i have to have a discussion and

00:26:42.160 i think that that's how we start and we have to start speaking honestly and fearlessly uh and i say

00:26:48.480 fearlessly in terms of like don't worry about you know being slammed that you're retrograde or you're

00:26:54.320 conservative if that's a bad word or right wing or whatever just because you have some questions i think

00:27:00.560 people you know have to pull on their their adult panties and and be willing uh to face people that

00:27:09.040 get angry with them but to respond in a calm rational way to talk about what the real concerns are and i

00:27:16.240 think that that's the way forward okay steven thank you so much for joining me today i look forward to

00:27:23.840 reading your whatever upcoming research that you have going on well my next big project for my phd is

00:27:30.640 going to be what uh teacher uh future teachers are learning in ed schools so uh that should be

00:27:38.240 interesting again tied to you know are they learning uh critical theory are they learning you

00:27:44.880 know the subject matters of what they will one day will be teaching and are they learning uh science

00:27:50.080 based or ideological based methods of transferring that knowledge to children oh well you know i look

00:27:55.840 forward to it all right thank you stephen thank you

Juno News - June 06, 2025

The Radical Politics Hijacking Canadian Education

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript